Stephen Coonts - The Disciple

The officer in charge of the planning was an air force major general, Stewart Heth, and he had officers from all the American armed forces to help him. He had the targets laid out on one wall chart, aircraft required on another and weapons on a third chart. A fourth chart showed assets, where they were located and the missions they would be assigned to. Staff officers were busy measuring distances and calculating times. Others were examining satellite reconnaissance photos and computing GPS coordinates.

Today Jake Grafton found General Heth huddled with two army Special Forces officers, one a general and the other a colonel. Heth looked up at Jake when he saw him and motioned him to join them.

“We have problems,” Heth said after he had introduced Jake to the army officers. “There is no way we can crack some of these bunkers. We’re going to have to put boots on the ground and blow the bunkers from the inside. All the centrifuges, the laser separation facility, the heavy water plant, all of that stuff is at least a hundred and sixty-five feet under bedrock.”

“Opposition?” Jake murmured as he looked at the chart on the table in front of them, a chart with the locations annotated.

“Lots of it, and if they are going to launch nukes, the guard troops will be on full alert. The only way we have a chance is to target the troops on guard, blow them to holy hell and put the Spec Forces guys right into the smoking craters before they have time to regroup. And they will regroup. Here around Tehran are several armored divisions and a couple of infantry divisions. These guys aren’t the Wermacht, but there are so many they’ll be tough to handle.”

“If their leadership is even halfway competent,” the Special Forces general agreed. “To be brutally honest, I don’t know if we can do it with paratroops or Special Forces. We may need armored columns punching in from Iraq. Battles are won with firepower.”

“Casualties?”

“I would expect to lose at least half my troops,” said the Spec Forces general. “Maybe more. The real problem is that our guys will have limited firepower, and once they go through what they have, it’s going to get really exciting. Air support will have to come from a thousand miles away, and I don’t care what anybody says, that’s too far.”

“Extraction?”

“We were discussing that. After the teams do their mission, they would have to egress to an airport where we can actually pick them up. And flying transports in will be a whole other problem.”

Jake spent a few more minutes with them, then left to go look at the large map of Iran posted on the wall. Iran was a damn big place, about three times the size of France. Over a hundred million people lived there. A lot of it was inhospitable deserts and mountains, much like Arizona, so most of the people were crammed into urban centers where they tried to earn a living.

In 1980 the military had tried to rescue American hostages held in the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They had flown helicopters north through the desert; the mission failed when one of the helos crashed trying to land in a cloud of dust and dirt. Iran was huge and inhospitable, yet the American military had learned a lot about desert operations since 1980.

Jake was standing there scrutinizing the map when he felt someone at his elbow. He turned. Sal Molina.

“I saw that list you sent over this morning. ‘Jihad missiles,’ no less. You didn’t make that crap up, did you?”

“Food for thought, eh?”

“Come clean. Where’d you get that list?”

“It happened just as I set it out in the cover memo.”

Molina stood looking around at the charts and maps. “Israel,” he murmured, “Baghdad, Doha, Kuwait, and-this is the part that I find unbelievable-Tehran.” He was silent for a moment. “So what do you think?” he asked finally.

Grafton took a deep breath. “We really have two problems here. One is the ballistic and cruise missiles that get launched. The other is the people who ordered them launched.”

Sal thought a little bit about that. “Okay,” he finally said.

“Some of the missiles are going to get into the air unless we do a first strike, which your boss ruled out. We need a layered defense, a defense in depth, to try to knock down as many of those missiles as possible before they reach their targets.”

“I’m with you.”

“We won’t get them all.”

Sal Molina didn’t respond.

Grafton continued. “Uranium enrichment, bomb and missile factories aren’t a threat in and of themselves. It’s the people who build bombs that are the problem. Taking out those facilities will require an invasion of Iran. I doubt that the president will approve it, even if the Iranians wipe Israel off the face of the earth.”

“Go on.”

“What we need to do,” the admiral said, “is cut off the head of the dragon.”

“A coup d’état ?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“America has tried those before, once in Iran, I believe. They don’t work very well.”

“You’ll like the idea a lot better after you talk to General Heth.”

“Can it be done?”

“I think so,” Jake Grafton said and tapped his finger on the map, way up near the top, on Tehran. “Iran has a vibrant young population and a political opposition that the regime has tried to sit on. All they need is a chance.”

I spotted Ghasem in front of the metro station. He seemed to be alone, a twenty-something guy, obviously middle class, with a short beard and trimmed hair.

We rode past him once, looking for the tails. There were plenty of people around at that time of night, yet all seemed to be going somewhere. No one was standing around, watching other people or pretending to read a newspaper or book.

I assumed that if Ghasem thought he was being watched, he wouldn’t stand there like a store dummy waiting for us.

I stopped in front of him on our next circuit of the block, and Davar got off the back of the bike. “I can get home from here,” she said as she pulled off her helmet. Ghasem stared at his cousin; apparently he had never seen her on a motorcycle or wearing a helmet. Davar helped Ghasem don the helmet and fasten the strap under his chin. As he climbed on the bike, she smiled at me.

I winked at her, then eased the clutch out. I figured the park was as good a place as any, so I rode in that direction.

There weren’t many people there, which was fine with me. I parked the bike and killed the engine. We both dismounted and took off the helmets.

Ghasem looked tired and under a lot of stress. Well, hell, welcome to the wonderful world of treason.

“What is this all about?” I asked.

His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down several times before he spoke. “Today,” he said, “Ahmadinejad told the top ministers that when the warheads are installed, he wants to launch the missiles at his enemies. Iran will become a martyr nation.”

He didn’t look like he was pulling my leg, but still, what if this was just a ploy to goad America and its friends into attacking Iran?

“A martyr nation,” I said slowly. “What does that mean to you?”

“That the Supreme Leader and the mullahs will launch a nuclear strike, and Iran will die under massive retaliation. What else could it mean?”

I told him I didn’t know.

After a moment he continued, a man talking aloud to himself. “The other possibility is that they will use the twelve warheads on us, the Iranians, detonate them over Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan… all the cities-then blame the Americans or Jews.” He took a deep breath, then exhaled explosively. “They are capable of that, I think. As long as they thought the will of Allah was being done…”

I didn’t try to figure it out. What I needed to do was get this information to Jake Grafton. I fingered the cell phone in my pocket. Unencrypted, but it was doubtful if the Iranians were listening. They might be, but I didn’t think so.